


Keep Your Friends Close

by Loopdeloup



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M, Janeway angst, Post Caretaker, after convincing Chakotay to join the crew, and once her captain powers down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 17:16:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29670597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loopdeloup/pseuds/Loopdeloup
Summary: It has to be said, none of this---None. Of. This---was a good idea. Starting with you thinking you deserve to go into command training. Starting from there.Yes, you’re good at what you do. But is what you do good?Oh, Janeway. What have you done this time?-----Once her battle-fire bravado has burned out and her Captain Courageous has abandoned ship, Janeway gives herself her customary post-crisis dressing down.
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 17
Kudos: 16





	Keep Your Friends Close

Keep your friends close

Hot damn Janeway! What have you gotten yourself into now, you fool?

Get a grip, Captain! And not that kind of grip, damn it!

Just like you to start showing off, acting all sassy once you’ve got your command fire burning, running on caffeine and pure adrenaline. You’ve always been too good a salesperson for your own good, for anyone's good, and it looks like---since you can’t be a bit smarter and engage your brain before your goddamn need to convince everyone that you rule, and you win at everything, and you are the Captain, YOU are THE CAPTAIN---you are finally going to have to pay the price for selling everyone opium dreams for a living, you complete con artist.

You wanted to be another Pike, another Conway. Well now it looks like you are setting yourself up to play Captain Goddamned Kathryn Kirk, no less. You and your big arrogant ambition. So self-deluded, you swindle all these poor innocent people into believing you know what you’re doing. Oh Janeway, you impostor. When are you going to learn?

Well now you’re in deep, and you played your bluff and – bam! Looks like you sold it. They all bought it. And now you’re all up to the neck, and this is not going to be anyone’s idea of a honeymoon first voyage and you’re just going to have to keep on playing the game until you see it through, one way or another, you goddamn hustler. Fake it until you make it, the story of your life. Only for you it’s fake it until you fake it some more. No respite, no backup, no way out. This time you are the big strong God Almighty Starship Captain until this damn thing blows up in your face, you get found out for the fraud that you are, acting all Tough and Know-It-All, and Holier Than Thou, and Mightier Than Thee, and Righter Than Everyone, and now you just have to suck it up and wear the crystal slippers, no matter how bad the thousands of knives cut into your feet, and walk that thousand-mile walk. That 70,000-light-year walk. And never let them see your smile falter or your crown slip, or your eyelids weary with sleep or self-doubt or the sick inner certainty that you messed this up for everyone, you total fraudulent fool.

And there you go again, casting yourself one moment as the mighty hero, the noble leader, the invincible arbiter of Starfleet prowess, and the next, once your battle-fire bravado burns out and your Captain Courageous abandons ship, you’re suddenly the poor princess locked in a tower, the pathetic victim of circumstance. Don’t you dare wallow, Janeway. Don’t you dare become that broken ensign science officer locked in a dark hole again. That type of pathetic is a luxury no one can afford now, you raving egomaniac, you need to control yourself, you’re going to get yourself and everyone who has ever placed their trust in you killed, sooner rather than later.

As if it’s not enough merely to ruin all their lives.

You have to be smart, smarter than that. You have to hold it together.

Though it has to be said, none of this--- _None. Of. This_ \---was a good idea. Starting with you thinking you deserve to go into command training. Starting from there.

Yes, you’re good at what you do. But is what you do good?

Oh, Janeway. What have you done this time?

Tuvok wasn’t having it at first. No, but you wouldn’t listen to him, would you? Over 100 years of experience and training and wisdom and pure logic, but no; you know better. You. Know. Better. And you used all your wily ways to make the poor Vulcan concede there is some logic to what you were already hell bent on doing anyway.

It all sounded very nice and coldly reasoned out, Kathryn. But are you really sure you were just following Sun Tzu’s precepts? That’s what sold it to Tuvok.

Yeah right, Kathryn. _Keep your friends close and your enemies closer_ , my arse. His arse. In leathers.

Oh Janeway. What have you done?

His arse in leathers. That was what did it, wasn’t it? You, in your delusional command persona, couldn’t resist, could you? Couldn’t resist striking out, going all out, gunning for the boldest, most daring solution, relying on your own power of persuasion, that rush of sexed-up invincibility that makes you believe you can pull off anything when you are standing in the eye of the storm, feeling like a Goddess. Drunk with power, high with adrenaline, aflood with the endorphins of a megalomaniac in command.

You should have thrown that sexy leather-clad arse right in the brig. You know what your orders were. But no! You convinced yourself, you convinced Tuvok: _Keep your enemies closer_.

You know just how close you were thinking about, and that is no way to act with your enemy Kathryn. You’re supposed to be engaged, you have a life-time commitment already committed to, for Spock’s sake! Regardless of how much of that lifetime you have just condemned yourself to using up to get back to honouring that commitment. You’re supposed to be a Starfleet Captain. Correct. Dignified. Not falling over herself to accommodate some wildly attractive rogue just because he is a wildly attractive rogue with twinkling black eyes acting the high-moral-ground revolutionary, the dashing highwayman.

You always have had a soft spot for the bad boys, haven’t you?

First you had to bring the wild child Tom Paris along. Feeding your own ego, saving lesser souls that you can enslave to your beneficence ever after, while also racking up some brownie points with the brass back home. Contemptible.

And now this Maquis, leading a whole band of rogues. You can’t resist the temptation. You have to make everyone like you, don’t you? Make everyone love you? Not content until you have everyone falling over themselves to recognise your brilliance, your leadership, your power. It is a sickness. You are sick. Not fit for command.

And now 151 other souls are condemned to paying the price of your egomania with a lifetime of pain and isolation from everything that is dear to them.

So you sell it to Tuvok, and then what do you do? You go and do THAT. Sell it to HIM, make him believe it too, bring him onboard with your mad plan. And you win him over. The one person who should have called your bluff, shown you up for the impostor you are.

And how did you do that, Kathryn? You had to go and play the sex card on him, didn’t you? You couldn’t resist flexing your charisma on him, flashing all the signs of serious interest, broadcasting them loud and clear on all subspace channels, iris to dilated iris. Just because _he_ comes across all sex god, you had to up the ante and trump his ace. It's not even that you're all that attractive, but you know all the tricks, don’t you? And you use them shamelessly. You know that humanoids generally---humans, certainly---automatically rate someone that holds their gaze in invitation to be more attractive than a more objectively attractive person that gives no sign of interest. You know just the right degree to which to invade body space, to use little touches, to send all those signs that will unconsciously register as interest to the recipient and automatically, unconsciously, increase your appeal.

And now you’ve done it, you signed him on, you signed them all on. And now how are you going to roll this back, now you’ve practically seduced him - seduced them all - into submission? Now that you’re going to have to walk a not-at-all subtle line straight from seduction to Starfleet rules and regulations? Good luck with that!

And now there is nothing for it but for you to run this Ship of the Damned with a crew two-thirds Starfleet and one-third Anarchy on a Dante’s Inferno dance all across the Delta Quadrant.

Oh Janeway, you mad megalomaniac, what have you done?

 _Keep your enemies even closer_.

Your closest enemy is already much too close.

Your closest enemy is yourself.

And there is no getting away from her now, not for another 70,000 light years.


End file.
